To think people are quite petty to object to charity shop staff getting "first dibs" when they are BUYING the items?

[SorcererGaheris]

For context, I am a volunteer in a charity shop myself, and if I see something that I want, I will purchase it. The shop doesn't give staff discounts, either; staff pay full price - the last item I bought, a book, cost me £40.

Anyway, I COMPLETELY understand people objecting if volunteers were to just take donated items for themselves, but I've seen some online discussions in which people complain about the staff getting first pick of donations when they are paying for them. I really don't see the problem in this case, and think people who object are rather out of line. Other retail workers surely sometime purchase items from the shops they work in, so I don't see why volunteers should be begrudged that. A volunteer is a customer as much as any other.

Right and I’m sure your shop is honest.

But what’s stopping unscrupulous staff in a different shop writing “handbag £5” when it’s a Gucci one.

My local charity shops send you an email once your donated items are sold to tell you how much they sold for which is a good way to mitigate against this though.

Well, I can't say what different charity shops do, but I would imagine most would have some kind of a system in place to try to prevent someone massively underpricing a product they'd like to buy.

Often I'll see a items out on the shelves that have already been priced and will buy them then. If it's an item that I would price myself, I usually get another member of staff to set the price. I'm not sure if that's the shop's rule or not. If something has already been priced by another member of staff, then I'll go ahead and buy it right off.

I'm not sure what your point is here - could you elaborate?

In my shop most items are only priced by paid staff unless it's something that's always a set price or has a simple pricing guide, and they are all low value items anyway.

If paid staff want to buy something we have to get another member of staff to price it. And it's in our interest to make sure high value items are priced correctly, we need the shop to make enough money to justify its existence or it'll close and we'll lose our jobs.

I work as a volunteer in a charity shop where the manager gives us generous discounts if we buy stuff. We usually pay 50% of usual charity shop prices. If I was paid minimum wage, it would cost the charity about £45 per week for my labour. I feel that the discounts volunteers receive are recognition of the value of our hard work for the charity. After all, those people who don't like it could quite easily give up their free time to volunteer couldn't they?

I was in a charity shop, 2 or 3 years ago, when the manager asked one of the others to put some items through the till for her. A big pile of designer children's clothes - £1 for the lot! I could not believe my eyes. She was talking to the other woman quite openly that they would be brilliant for her sister's kids. I don't donate anything to charity shops after that. It's no wonder there are so few decent items left for the rest of us.

Same in the one I volunteered in.

We used to sort items to go in different categories too.

Best items stayed in our shop or went to a shop in an equally ‘naice’ area. By this I mean brands like Levi, Jacques Vert, Clements Ribero, Whistles, Hush, White Company, Barbour, M&S etc. Burberry, Mulberry, Doc Marten etc are not unusual in this shop.

Next Best went to another local shop in another suburb - River Island, Next, Debenhams, etc.

Low quality went out to the costal shops - supermarket brands, primark, peacocks, simply be etc.

Then rag. Everything is priced by paid staff but we could buy what we wanted and it was recorded in a book. Trust me, there was absolutely no shortage of items from high end to low end. We had (and they still have) a kitchen aid for sale almost every week. And always 3 in the in back room on stand by for when we didn’t have one to sell. I’ve had all sorts of incredible items from the shop and I’ve paid exactly what anyone else would pay. I was volunteering whilst off sick from work after being badly bullied.

And that's certainly not on, but I'm more referring to staff purchasing items at actual sale price or for a small discount. When staff pay full asking price or receive a very minimal discount, then I can't understand why anyone would have an issue. Staff and customer are not always separate roles; when staff pay properly, they are customers too.

I work at a food bank and if someone donates lobster bisque from the back of a cupboard on a short date I will 'buy' it for 3 tins of tomato and take it home. So many people send back the 'fancy' or unusual stuff we do try and swap it out if it's something we like. Last year we had a donation of several sachets of dry congee. We're a rural community with a limited cultural mix and none of the volunteers knew what it was and no one took them from the 'pick your own' table so I took it home and donated ramen in its place.
So I don't think that your fancy neighbour is doing anything wrong as long as they're back-filling with more popular foods.

The problem is that I have known of workers buying the items purely to sell at profit for themselves online.
That's just completely against the spirit of things and turns the charity shop into a sort of wholesaler for the staff's little side hustle

My view is that they're only harming themselves by doing this. If the shop is full of the picked-over remains of the volunteers' treasure spree, people will stop going.

As for swapping the lobster bisque for tomato soup in the food bank - what a nasty thing to do. Thankfully I don't need to use a food bank, but if I did I'd be over the moon with lobster bisque - one of my favourites that I don't often buy due to cost - don't poor people deserve special things?

In my experience less than 1% of donations on sale are bought by volunteers or staff where as stock lost to shoplifting runs at between 1 to 10%. The other way to look at it is how much a volunteer costs to 'employ' compared to paid staff. A paid staff member costs £11.44 p/hr minimum. A volunteer in our shop generally does a 4 hour shift so that saves the charity £45 straight away. So if a volunteer buys something that is being prepped for sale and gets their £2 bus fare refunded then that's still saving the charity money and raising funds.
In our shop only the managers price goods and everything must have an official price tag when it's sold. We also have cctv in the prep room and shop floor.
Yes, there are are 'bad' shops but that's the fault of shop and area management. Volunteers are the lifeblood of the charity retail sector so if a perk helps retain them then why would we not give them 'first dibs'?

But how are charity shops harming themselves? We staff are paying for the items we buy, and at the shop I volunteer in, we pay the full price for what it would be sold on the shelf. The charity is getting the exact same amount of money.

It doesn't make one iota of difference to the charity who buys the items, the point is to sell the items to make money. I don't see how a charity is harming itself by people such as myself buying things. In the case of the £40 book, I bought, it was on a very niche subject, so I doubt that most other customers would have been interested in it anyway.

My DD worked in a charity shop on the w'ends and there were very strict rules about not buying stock before it hit the shelves.

If a blouse or dress or handbag or whatever had been out in the store for AT LEAST A WEEK and no one purchased it, only then could volunteers buy it for themselves.

I think the issue is at the sorting level. Whoever receives the items sorts and prices them. It's quite easy for them to set aside things they would like to take home, either for themselves or for resale.

We have one charity, and one consignment store in town. Obviously the consignment store gets the better quality used clothes, and the staff there knows the labels and prices accordingly. The charity shop is really overrun with cheap and stained items that really should be trashed.

You rely on people coming in to buy things - you can't buy everything yourselves - and your footfall relies on the shop being 'attractive'. If a charity shop only ever has indifferent merchandise, you give up hope of finding anything interesting/a bargain and stop bothering to go in, which means you're not there to pick up those 'might as well' buys such as £1 paperback books or a standby black cardigan in reasonable condition.

That seems unnecessarily strict, if they're going to pay full price anyway.

I volunteer for a waste prevention organisation. We receive food (fruit and veg) from supermarkets, that would otherwise be binned (but is perfectly edible). It's not a food bank, it's open to all and it's purely about saving food from being wasted.

We're able to take food home too, but under the same rules as anyone else with regard to the maximum number of items etc. Yes, I do sometimes get to have first pick at the good stuff, but if I select something before everyone else comes in, it'll only be one item, like a mango or an avocado. All of us who volunteer there are very careful not to be grabby, even though it's a big commitment of time and physicality for us to work there unpaid.

Even if staff are offered discounts, I don't see any issue.

One of my first jobs was working for a niche catalogue company and on occasion would offer limited stock in their catalogue, staff got first dibs on that catalogue and at a staff discount, perks of the job in my opinion.

Exactly - we can't buy everything ourselves and we don't buy everything ourselves.

It's not unusual for staff at the shop I work in to buy items, but we have such a frequent volume of donations, that there is always plenty of good stuff for other customers to buy. Not for £1, though - the shop is now officially not allowed to sell anything for less than £2.99, although to be fair, that's been the minimum price for quite a lot of our stock for a while.

I don't see any problem with staff discount either. Nearly all retail businesses give their staff discounts. Most retail staff are on NMW and any retail business worth it's salt needs good experienced staff and one way to keep staff is through discounts. Volunteers are the same and an excellent volunteer is worth every penny of staff discount given.

The point is that if you habitually buy the best stuff, it makes the shop less attractive overall.

If you are charging £2.99 for paperback books, you are over-charging. Even British Heart Foundation only charges £2.

That sounds bonkers. You'd just get a friend to come in and buy it for you on the first day it went out surely?

I agree with you OP and had this conversation just the other day. What difference does it make if the volunteers buy a few bits as long as they're buying them? I still find plenty of nice stuff in my local charity shops, albeit it helps that we're in an affluent area so lots of good brands donated. I find your shop's £2.99 minimum rule a bit odd though, some donations from Primark / Shein etc must not have cost that in the first place!

I wouldn't say that volunteers are habitually buying "the best stuff". Volunteers simply buy items that they like, and those are not necessarily the best or nicest items - I've sometimes bought books that aren't in the greatest condition, so were far from the best, but I simply wanted to have and read the book.

Besides what one volunteer sees as the "best" might be seen as less so by someone else. It's all relative, to a point. I can say with confidence that the shop I'm in has a Iot of good books, CDs and DVDs on sale for the general public.

Prices are typically set by the "higher-ups". I believe head office informs the managers of what pricing should generally be, and the managers try to make sure that other members of staff abide by those guidelines. The managers have told me that books (which is the majority product in the shop I volunteer in) should typically be priced at a third of the original price.

I think it's up to the shop - obviously if volunteers are buying all the good stuff before it goes on sale that might damage the business as people go elsewhere.

That's not what typically happens - if volunteers happen to see something they like, they are simply allowed to buy it then and there. What they want to buy is not necessarily even the best stuff.